


Diptych in Amber I

by osprey_archer



Series: Diptych in Amber [1]
Category: Blood Feud - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-06 22:56:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/741123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why is he here?” Alexia asked me softly, when Anders was not in hearing. </p>
<p>“I do not know,” I admitted. </p>
<p>But I did. <i>There is a thing between you and me that is as strong as love,</i> Anders had said: and that drew him to us, far more strongly than the sea ever drew me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Diptych in Amber I

**Author's Note:**

> An AU for the end of _Blood Feud_. Thanks to carmarthen both for encouraging me to run with the idea, and for betaing in the fic!

I saved Anders because I had believed that he would die. If he had not been on the verge of death, I would never have had the chance to try to save him, for he would have fought till one of us prevailed. But he had been sick unto death, wading in the waters of Lethe, and though he had killed Thormod, I had fought to save him. 

I had thought he would die. But once he coughed out his abscess, his fever eased and with it his breathing, and I saw that he would live. And I grew uneasy: for though I had laid aside the blood feud, Anders was still bound by it. 

“I do not think he can harm me while he is a guest in our house,” I told Alexia one night, as we bent over the _Odyssey_ in the guttering light of the oil lamp. “For the guest right is a serious thing among the Viking kind, even as it was for the Achaeans.” 

“But when he is no longer our guest,” Alexia asked. “What then?”

I had no answer. 

But Anders did: and he gave it late one winter afternoon. Demetriades had been called away, and I had stayed long in the surgery with a man whose arm had been crushed by a cart; so I was late going to see Anders, and forgot that I still had a scalpel stuck in my belt. 

It was the late afternoon, when the winter sunlight seemed watery and thin on Anders’ hollow face. He had gained weight since he had stumbled half-starved to our door, but he was still too thin, his cheekbones sharp. His odd-colored eyes, one blue, one green, lifted from his contemplation of his hands when I came in, though not quite to my face. He coughed. 

“I am sorry to be late,” I told him, straightening his covers. They twisted around him; perhaps he thrashed when he dreamed. He did not answer me; he rarely spoke. But I continued talking, all the same, for Demetriades said it soothed the sick to be spoken to. “Alexia will bring you supper later. She has brought goat’s cheese from the market, I think, and there is honey from...”

I stepped back, and then I stopped talking: for Anders held my scalpel in his fist, as a baby holds a spoon. He could have had it in my stomach any time while I nattered on about his dinner. 

But that would have been deceitful, and thus unworthy of a Viking. And yet now that I had seen the scalpel, he still did not try to strike me. He was still kitten-weak, then, and I could have plucked the scalpel from his hand. But it seemed to me that we had reached the moment of reckoning, so I only stood still and waited a bare breathless moment to see what he would do. 

Anders let out a slow breath and turned the scalpel so the blade was in his hand, and held the haft to me. “A good vengeance you have had,” he said, and coughed. “I cannot fulfill the feud, while I owe a life debt to you.”

I took the scalpel from him. “I did not do it for vengeance,” I said. “You forget, I am not of the Viking kind.”

“I have never forgotten that.” He meant his words to sting. But I thought how he had lost his birth brother and his blood brother, and given up his shipmates to follow the feud that had killed both brothers, and now had lost his feud too; while I had found Alexia and Demetriades and my healing gift in Constantinople - and I felt no hurt, but only sorrow for him. 

“You will be well enough for the seaways come summer,” I told him. 

But he waited only till spring before he left with the merchant ships. I was surprised anyone would hire him, but I suppose the captain saw nothing but that he was a Viking, and everyone knew them for good sailors. 

I did not think we would see him again.

***

Yet in the late autumn he was back, standing on our doorstep in the sleet, wearing a gold armband and a wary look. “Anders,” I said, surprised and wary as well. “Why are you here?” 

His face closed in on itself. “I could not send something of such value with a messenger,” he said, working the armband off his arm. “It would not have made it to you. ” He held it out to me: a pretty thing, set in lapis lazuli, in the manner of the Egyptians. “Take it,” he said, thrusting it forward when I did not pluck it from his hands. His knuckles were chapped and red. “Take it, and call my debts paid; and I will go.”

We stood a moment. He coughed, a dry rattling sound, and it called me back to myself. I took the armband, but placed a hand on his arm to stay him before he could leave. “It is only that I was surprised,” I said. “Be you welcome, please. Come break bread with me; we have dates, and Alexia has been making honey-cakes. Unless...” There was a tension at his mouth, and I felt I must offer him a way to retreat. “Unless your ship sails soon?” 

He coughed again. “My ship does not sail this week, at least,” he said, odd-colored eyes studying my face. 

“That is fortunate,” I said, guiding him inside with my hand. “For Alexia has made a great many honey-cakes.” 

And so Anders stayed for a week. Alexia spoke to him kindly: but her eyes on him were wary all that week. I do not think she feared anymore that he might kill me; but when he told tales of the sea she grew stiff and cool, and turned her eyes to me, watching to see that the sea did not call me back. 

“Why is he here?” Alexia asked me softly, when Anders was not in hearing. 

“I do not know,” I admitted. 

But I did. _There is a thing between you and me that is as strong as love,_ Anders had said: and that drew him to us, far more strongly than the sea ever drew me. 

***

He was back again the next summer. A cold had gotten in his lungs and he stayed some little time with us, half-sleeping in the drowsy summer heat. “The sea will kill you someday,” I told him. 

“And so?” he said sleepily, hands hooked behind his head. “At least at sea I have a chance of a battle death, and Valhalla.” 

We were in the still room in the top of the house, where we dried herbs. Sweat trickled down my back beneath my shirt as I climbed the ladders to hang bunches of herbs from the rafters. I meant to take my shirt off, and yet I felt shy about doing so in front of Anders. It was odd that it should be so, for in the course of caring for him I had seen him naked many times. 

But he had been ill then, more like a cadaver than a man; and now he was strong again, the sunlight dappled across his sun-browned chest. The old scar where Thormod had stabbed him was white against his skin. 

But the heat got the better of me at last, and I tossed my shirt aside on the floor. The movement roused Anders from his drowse, and he rolled to his feet and said, “What is _that_?” 

I did not realize for a moment what he meant; but then he touched Thormod’s amber Thor’s hammer, which hung against my chest, still on its bloodstained thong. “This was Thormod’s,” he said, running a thumb over the amber.

“It was,” I agreed. 

We did not move, I on the bottom rung of the ladder, and Anders cupping Thormod’s amber in his palm. I felt myself flushing. He only held the amber, yet it seemed I could feel his hand on me, his thumb caressing my skin. 

Anders hooked his finger through the thong and tugged. It was a gentle pull, yet I half-fell off the ladder, bearing Anders to the floor. There was the thin pale scar where Thormod had stabbed him, light as the vein on a poplar leaf, and without thinking I placed my lips on it. Anders gasped and drew away. 

“I am sorry,” I said. I pulled myself up to lie alongside him, and touched the scar on his side with my hand. “Does it hurt?”

“In a manner of speaking,” said Anders, with a half-laugh that turned into a cough. The backs of his fingers brushed my collarbone as he lifted Thormod’s amber Thor’s hammer into his palm again. He held it, looked at it; and then he closed his eyes, as if the sight pained him. 

I had not thought before how it must have hurt him to be forced into a blood feud with Thormod. I raised my hand to his cheek, and Anders turned his face into my hand. 

I stroked my thumb across his skin, tracing the puckered scar over his cheekbone, the line of his nose. He was not a handsome man, exactly; and the thing I felt for him was not exactly love, for it was a tangled thing next to my clear bright love for Alexia. Yet I was glad that he was there; I was always happiest when he was there, where I could watch over him, rather than coughing himself to death at sea. 

_Stay here_ , I thought. But to leave the ships would take from him all chance of Valhalla, and all hope of seeing Thormod again: I could not ask it of him. 

Anders kissed my palm lightly. Then he opened his eyes, dropped the amber, and pulled himself to sit. “On my next voyage I will bring you a new chain for it,” he said. “If you like.” 

“I would be glad,” I said, sitting too. “The thong needs to be replaced.” 

It was Thormod’s thong, stained with Thormod’s blood, and once, it had seemed impossible that I should ever replace it. Yet it seemed fitting that Thormod’s amber should hang on Anders’ chain: that they should be reconciled in this small way. 

“And I will bring a thing for your Alexia,” Anders said. “Amber beads - or perhaps a fox from Tripoli; so she will not mind having me here.” 

I wished I could say she did not mind. But it would not be true: so I said lightly, “Not a fox. It will wreak havoc in the house.” 

“Perhaps I want it so,” he said, half-teasing. “To remind you of me, when I am not here.” 

“We have no trouble remembering you,” I told him. Something eased in his face, and he smiled at me. “Now go downstairs,” I said. “I have to hang these herbs.”


End file.
